Christian Living, Biblical Studies, Religion, Spiritual Growth, Theology
John Beeson
The Faith of Unbelief

Bart Ehrman has perhaps done more to undermine the credibility of the Bible than anyone else in my lifetime. But his story didn’t begin that way. Ehrman is a New Testament scholar and skeptic. Ehrman grew up in a Christian home, attended a conservative Bible school, and then found his way to a liberal seminary where his faith in the God of the Bible unraveled. That seminary happens to be the seminary I would attend a couple of decades later.

For Ehrman, everywhere he looks he sees holes in the biblical story. The inconsistencies that he sees have led him to determine that he cannot trust in the God of the Bible.

The Faith of Unbelief
Christian Living, Culture, Spiritual Growth
John Beeson
Don't Numb Your Feelings

“Don’t listen to your feelings; remember what Jesus did for you!”

“Don’t be guided by your feelings; listen to what God commands you to do!”

In just the past week, I heard both of these warnings. Two very different Christian speakers urged their audiences to shut down their feelings. These admonitions resonate. They contain truth. It is correct that our feelings don’t override truth, nor do our emotions negate what God has done. Neither do our feelings give us an out for what God commands us to do.

Don't Numb Your Feelings
History, Spiritual Growth, Suffering, Wisdom
John Beeson
Lord, Reach Your Justice Down

I had outsized emotions as a child. Games, especially, would get the best of me, whether cards or boardgames or sports. In response to a stroke of bad luck, a hot surge of anger would erupt, followed quickly by tears and then embarrassment.

Emotions are God’s gift to us in many ways. They are one of his kind ways of showing us where our deep attachments lie.

Our son started his freshman year at the University of Arizona this fall. It’s been a great experience for him, but not without its adjustments. The climate of a secular school is quite different than the Christian school he graduated from

Lord, Reach Your Justice Down
Culture, Generosity, Nature, Relationships
John Beeson
Marshmallows and Friends

Most have heard of the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment. In 1970, psychologist Walter Mischel invited kids into his lab. A child was offered a marshmallow that they could eat, or, if they waited until the researcher returned, they were given a second marshmallow. About one-third of the kids waited approximately fifteen minutes for the additional reward.

The study then tracked those children over time and found that children who waited for the second reward tended to have higher SAT scores and lower body mass indexes. Later tests have challenged those outcomes, but it hasn’t stopped parents everywhere from running the experiment on their kids, often with humorous results.

Marshmallows and Friends
Christian Living, Culture, Politics
John Beeson
Uprooting Our Political Identity

Happy election day!

In 2016, data scientists Eitan Hersh and Yair Ghitza analyzed data among registered voters to determine how often Democrats and Republicans married. They learned that 9% of marriages had the spouses registered in the two parties. Over the next four years that meager number would drop precipitously, down to 4%.

 As Jonathan Haidt and others have successfully argued, the ideological disparity between FOX News and CNBC are child’s play compared to the engineered social media algorithms that create hermetically sealed echo chambers for our political views.

Uprooting Our Political Identity

Orphan Care

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Farewell to our Easter Lily

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Farewell to our Easter Lily

Maundy Thursday, 4pm

“Angel, give me a call ASAP. We need to talk.”

Not a text you want to receive from your DCS case worker.

We called immediately.

“We’ve decided to move Lilly to a home closer to her half-sister.”

We hadn’t been notified that was even a possibility.

“Can we pick her up tonight?”

We talked the case worker out of that idea and into waiting until Monday.

We hung up the phone and sat in silence, shocked.

Jesus took the unleavened bread that Passover night and he gave it to his disciples, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”[i]

Our bond with Lilly had come so naturally. She had only been with us three and a half months, but we were a mutual admiration society. After a couple of weeks of trauma-induced non-responsive behavior, she opened up. It wasn’t long before her squeals and belly laughs filled our home. We kissed her, squeezed her, and sung and prayed over her.

We dreamed of the possibility of adopting Lilly. We didn’t know if that would be possible, but we knew that the case would be a long one. We would get to enjoy her for at least another year.

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Three weeks to Healing

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Three weeks to Healing

She was the littlest thing. Fourteen months old but in nine month clothes. It was 9pm and the social worker put her limp sleeping body in my arms without ceremony. She was finishing up a long day and obviously wanted to get home. Handing the tiny bundle off meant that her final box was checked. She checked off the box and we stepped into it, not knowing what lay ahead. You never do.

They had told us hardly anything on the call: her age and that she was removed from her home because of neglect and abuse. And the social worker added no more details that evening. In fact, they got her name wrong. It would be a week before we would learn her correct name (which I'm withholding because of ongoing security concerns).

The next day we saw signs of neglect and abuse in spades. She wore nothing but a blank expression and cried every time we set her down, even for a few seconds.

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This Week's Recommendations

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This Week's Recommendations

1.      The Fight Between a Volcano and Life: Footage of new growth struggling to survive in an otherworldly landscape at the foot of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano.  Thanks to Tim Challies for pointing to this cool video.

2.      How to Raise Empathetic Kids. Rebecca Randall with a thoughtful reflection on the impact of parents on their kids: “The students’ values seemed to echo what they thought their parents and teachers valued more: When asked, 48 percent chose achievement as their top value, 30 percent chose happiness, and only 22 percent chose caring as a top priority.”

3.      The Hardest Walk: Taylor Brenner reflects on what makes foster care so difficult and so rewarding.

4.      You Don’t Have a Communication Problem: Tony Morgan reflects on the difficult truth that as leaders we probably don’t have a communication problem, we probably have a vision, complexity, or systems problem.

5.      Professor Joe v. the IRS and Turbo Tax: The UShas the most complicated tax system in the world? Why can’t we make it simpler? How one man took on the system and why he failed.

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What Our 2 Year Old Foster Child Taught Me About Care

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What Our 2 Year Old Foster Child Taught Me About Care

Valentijn was hand-in-hand with the aid and Romeo in the crook of her arm. The aid had just driven the boys from the shelter, where they had spent three weeks. Chubby Romeo was ten months old at the time and well adjusted. It was two-year old Valentijn who had been impacted the most significantly. This was the third time Valentijn had been removed from his home. He was affectionate but fragile without boundaries.

As the Department of Childcare Services Specialist filled out the transfer paperwork to make our foster care official, Valentijn sat on my lap and pulled out the decorative pine cones from the bowl on the table and chucked them on the ground, one by one.

Not knowing what it looked like to love and discipline him well, I sat there, semi-stunned, and let him disassemble my wife’s handiwork. From that first moment, I knew parenting these two would prove to be a much different task than raising our two biological children.

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All In Orphan Care by Jason Johnson

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All In Orphan Care by Jason Johnson

There is a unique beauty in orphan care. Jason Johnson in All In Orphan Care puts it this way: “Caring for the marginalized, oppressed and orphaned is not only one of the clearest expressions of the heart of God but also one of the most tangible demonstrations of the gospel this world will ever see.” I’m so grateful that God has allowed our family to get a taste of experiencing our Heavenly Father’s love anew through our own journey in orphan care. And as we launch our first Orphan Weekend this weekend, I’m so excited to see others at our church get a taste of God’s love through this lens.

Tracks to 5-3: Redirecting the Tracks of Orphans

Tracks to 5-3: Redirecting the Tracks of Orphans

15 years ago in Madison Street Jail, level 5, block 3 that God began readying my heart for foster care. I graduated from college with a degree in Biblical-Theological studies and got married weeks later. Knowing that pastoral ministry was God’s long-term call, I wanted to do something that would impact me and impact others, but outside of traditional vocational ministry. A billboard on the highway promoting the need for Detention Officers struck a chord and six months later I stood dressed head to foot in starched brown in a concrete box in downtown Phoenix that was Maricopa County’s Maximum Street Jail.

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